Wealth: It’s Not for Everyone
Via Sandwichman at Econospeak comes this well done video on Wealth: It’s Not for Everyone, which is going to 3 million views from facebook, reddit, and elswhere:
Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.
I would love to hear an argument based on MPl from a supply-sider that legitimizes CEO pay relative to the general workforce in this country.
I was just about to post this same video.
http://jazzbumpa.blogspot.com/2013/03/inequality.html
This makes me wonder again how we compare in A. D. 2013 with the stratification of society in, say, A. D. 1213. Now, the bottom 40% have essentially zero wealth. That might have been true then, as well, and perhaps reaching for a couple more quintiles – for in those days the middle class had not yet been invented. But at the top now, the distribution is so skewed that the 99th percentile have vastly more than the 98th percentile who have vastly more than the 97th.
Don’t get me wrong, those in the 97th percentile are doing very well, indeed. But the top percent, and the top tenth of a percent in particular really have amassed wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.
Back in A.D 1213, could there possibly have been orders of magnitude differences among fine divisions of the top couple of percent? In a time when wealth was measure in land, cows and gold chalices, that’s very hard for me to believe.
Cheers!
JzB
jazz
you better believe.
but i’ll wait for Bruce. he knows more than i do.
(think of this… having a hundred or a thousand times as much as someone who has nothing is not all that hard.)
Jazz,
Take a closer look at France, circa 1775. Huge debt, hugely disproportionate wealth and income, and frequent wars of adventure. Granted that that last aspect was of some help to George W.(not Bush) and his cohorts. Maybe we are due for an upheaval. Really bad weather had an awful effect on the harvest at the time and added to the misery of some having everything while other had little. When the middle class begins to feel the squeeze I’d recommend heading for some safe haven until the rioting cools down.
Let the rioting, commence.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-06/eric-holder-some-banks-are-so-large-it-difficult-us-prosecute-them
GRASSLEY: On the issue of bank prosecution, I’m concerned that we have a mentality of too-big-to-jail in the financial sector of spreading from fraud cases to terrorist financing and money laundering cases — and I cite HSBC. So I think we’re on a slippery slope.
HOLDER: The concern that you have raised is one that I, frankly, share. And I’m not talking about HSBC now. That (inaudible) be appropriate.
But I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.
Again, I’m not talking about HSBC. This is just a — a more general comment. I think it has an inhibiting influence — impact on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate. And I think that is something that we — you all need to — need to consider. So the concern that you raised is actually one that I share.
Dale –
Yes, but I;m talking about having a huge multiple of those who have A LOT!
Jack –
After recently seeing two of my grandsons die on the barricade in a local production of Les Miz, I try to avoid having any thoughts about late 18th century France.
But, to your point, the populism in this country is of the right wing variety. We’ll have fascism or feudalism before we ever get around to having riots. And then it will be too damned late.
Cheers!
JzB
jazz
re “more than those that have a lot”. yes. i did not read carefully enough.
i think les miz was about 1848.
but i agree about barricades and such.
apparently it was 1832.
1832? 1848? You guys are a little late for a truer analogy which focuses on wealth and income disparities. Let’s look more closely at 1780-1794. When the middle class, that’s the bourgeoisie of the period in France, begin to feel the stink of hunger and want they will be the first to the barricades. Selfish scum that most humans are, it takes that kind of up close and personal before we feel the need to assist our fellow man/woman. A large part of the current problem is that the MSM is made up of upper middle class scribes who are happy to repeat any ideological perspective that helps to maintain their own exalted positions,
a la Charlie Rose. Then there is the “professional” class of “experts” like Ms MacGuineas who early learn the correct position to take in order to stay on the high road to personal accomplishment and upper middle class status. They have to feel the sting of want before they begin to cry out about injustice.
Jack
you are entirely right.
but the 1832 (correction of 1848) was not an anology… just identifying the period in history that “les Miserables” was about.
jazz was concerned about the amount of “inequality” at the top… a concern i do not share. in fact i get pretty annoyed at the whining of those who have too much but feel sorry for themselves because others have a lot more. let us work on making sure that everyone has enough for a decent life. and then the rest can play their “better than you” game.
it does turn out, however, that those who have “way too much” in our country (world) are doing vast harm to the country and to the ordinary person’s chances of having a decent life. that needs to be fixed. but it won’t be fixed by “equality.”
and, absent a real historian, my understanding of the “AD 1213” world that jazz cites is that even “the rich” were not any richer than, say, i am today. they owned property and a house, and had a few servants (my servants are all called General Electric), but they owned very little else, were one bad year away from starvation, disease, and “death from politics.” i think the very rich in those days.. the king and richer barons were not all that much better off… using their wealth to maintain the armies that extorted wealth at home an abroad.
not much has changed.
the media stars and the high end “experts” remind me more of the “courts” of the kings and popes.
jazz
an aspect of “97th percentile” you might not have considered:
while that would make you richer than 97 out of a hundred, the fact is that there are three of you richer than that 97. this means that each of you is only richer than about 30.
might be easier to see my point if you imagine a “rich person” living in his castle with 30 servants.
and his two neighbors who each live about the same.
Howard Zinn, in his book “A People’s History of the United States”, frequently speaks of the number of times we have come close to class warfare in the US. However, in these instances, the lower classes begin to do a little better and the tension abates. With the current push by the NRA to arm every citizen in the US three times over, those at the top might want to take notice.